Trade and
DevelopmentMessage to the 11th
UNCTAD Conferenceby Fidel Castro

Havana, June 13, 2004

The UNCTAD, an organization founded 40 years ago, was a noble attempt by the
underdeveloped world to create in the United Nations, through fair and
rational international trade, an instrument to serve its aspirations of
progress and development. There were lots of hopes then and the naive idea
that the former metropolises were aware of the duty and the necessity to
share that goal.

Raul Prebisch was the main promoter of that idea. He had
characterized the phenomenon of the unequal terms of reference as one of
the great tragedies hindering the economic development of the peoples in
the Third World. This was one of his most
important contributions to the economic culture of our times. In
recognition of his relevant qualities, he was elected the first Secretary
General of this United Nations agency for trade and
development.

Today, the terrible scourge of the unequal terms of reference
is barely mentioned in speeches and
conferences.

International trade has not been an instrument for the
development of the poor countries that today make up the overwhelming
majority of mankind. For 86 of them, basic commodities account for over
half of their export revenues. Meanwhile, the purchasing power of such
products, except oil, is now less than one third of what it was at the
time of UNCTAD’s inception.

Although figures tend to be repetitive and boring, oftentimes
it becomes unavoidable to use their eloquent and irreplaceable
language.

85% of the world population lives in the poor countries but
their share of international trade is only
25%.

These
countries’ external debt was close to 50 billion USD
in 1964, the year this United Nations agency was born, while today it is
2.6 trillion.

Between 1982 and 2003, that is, in 21 years the poor world
paid 5.4 trillion USD in debt service, which means that its present sum
has been paid to the rich countries more than
twice.

The
poor countries were promised development aid and the steady reduction of
the gap between the rich and the poor; they were even promised that it
would reach 0.7% of the so-called GDP of those economically developed, a
figure that if true would amount today to no less than 175 billion USD
annually.

What the Third World
received as official development aid in 2003 was only 54 billion USD. That
same year, the poor paid to the rich 436 billion in debt service and the
richest of them all, the United States of America, was
the one farther from meeting the set goal, as it allocated only 0.1% of
its GDP to that aid. And this leaves out the enormous amounts taken away
as a result of the unequal terms of trade.

In
addition, the rich countries spend every year 300 billion USD on subsidies
that prevent the poor countries’ access to their
markets.

On
the other hand, it is practically impossible to measure the damage brought
upon those countries by the kind of trade relations that, through the
sinuous roads of the WTO and the Free Trade Agreements, are imposed on the
poor countries, which are unable to compete with the sophisticated
technology, the almost absolute monopoly over intellectual property and
the immense financial resources of the rich
countries.

Other forms of plundering that add to this are the gross
exploitation of the cheap labor force in assembly plants that come and go
at light speed; the currency speculation in the range of trillion dollars
every day; arms trade; the seizure of goods belonging to the national
cultural heritage; the cultural invasion as well as other actions related
to theft and pillage that it would be impossible to list here. The classic
books on economics do not show the most brutal transference of financial
resources from the poor to the rich countries, as it has not been studied
yet, that is, the flight of capital which is a must that characterizes the
prevailing world order.

Everybody’s money escapes to the United
States to protect itself from the
monetary instability and the speculative frenzy brought about by the same
economic order. Without this gift that the rest of the world, mostly the
poor, makes to the United States, it would be
impossible for the present administration to withstand its enormous fiscal
and trade deficits that in the year 2004 amount to no less than 1 trillion
dollars.

Would anyone dare to deny the social and human consequences
of the neoliberal globalization imposed on the
world?

If 25 years ago
five hundred million people were going hungry, today over 800 million are
starving.

In
the poor countries, 150 million children are born underweight, which
raises their risks of death as well as of mental and physical
underdevelopment.

325 million children do not attend
school.

Infant mortality rate under one year is 12 times higher than
it is in the rich countries.

33
thousand children die every day in the Third
World of curable illnesses.

Two million girls are forced into
prostitution.

85
percent of the world population made up by poor countries consumes only 30
percent of the energy, 25 percent of the metals and 15 percent of the
timber.

There are billions of full illiterates or functional
illiterates on the planet.

How
can the imperialist leaders and those who share in the plundering of the
world speak of human rights and even use such words as freedom and
democracy in this brutally exploited world?

A
permanent crime of genocide is being committed against mankind. The number
of children, mothers, adolescents, youths and adults who could be saved
and die every year for lack of food, medical care and medicines is similar
to the tens of millions who perished in any of the two world wars. This is
happening every day, every hour, while none of the great leaders of the
developed and rich world say a single word about
it.

Can
this situation go on forever? Definitely not, and for purely objective
reasons.

After tens of thousands of years, humanity has reached at
this minute --and almost unexpectedly given the accelerated pace of the
last 45 years when it more than doubled- a population of 6,350 millions
and these people must be provided with dress, shoes, food, shelter and
education. That figure will almost inevitably grow to 10 billion within
hardly 50 more years. By then, both the proven and the unproven fuel
reserves that it took the planet 300 million years to build will no longer
exist as they will have been thrown to the atmosphere, the waters and the
soils together with other chemical
pollutants.

The
imperialist system that prevails today, towards which the developed
capitalist society unavoidably evolved, has already come to such a
ruthlessly irrational and unfair world economic and neoliberal order that
it is unsustainable. Many peoples will rebel against it. In fact, they
have already begun to rebel. It is stupid to say that this is the work of
parties, ideologies or subversive and destabilizing agents from
Cuba and
Venezuela.

Among other things, this evolution brought with it the
so-called consumer societies, also an unavoidable process within the
framework and norms that rule the system. In these societies, their
irresponsible and spendthrift tendencies have poisoned the minds of large
numbers of people in the world that amid generalized economic and
political ignorance are manipulated by commercial and political publicity
through the fabulous media created by
science.

These conditions in the rich and powerful countries have not
been particularly auspicious for the development of capable and
responsible leaders gifted with the knowledge, the political principles
and the ethics that such an extremely complex world demand. It is not
their fault as they themselves are the result and the blind instruments of
that evolution. Will they be able to handle with responsibility the
extremely complicated political situations showing up in the world in
growing numbers?

Soon it will be 60 years to the day that the first nuclear
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. There are tens of thousands of
such weapons in the world today, which are scores of times more powerful
and accurate; and they continue to be produced and perfected. There are
even programs for nuclear missile bases in outer space. New more
sophisticated and deadly arm systems are being
produced.

For
the first time in history man would have created the technical capacity
for its own destruction. However, it has not been capable of creating a
minimum of guarantees for the safety and integrity of every country, on
equal footing. Theories are elaborated and even applied with respect to
the pre-emptive and surprise use of the most sophisticated weapons, “in
any dark corner of the world,” “in 60 or more countries,” that make the
barbaric claims of the darkest days of Nazism go pale. We have already
seen wars of conquests, and sadistic methods of torture that bring back to
memory the images showed at the end of the II World
War.

The
United Nations prestige is being undermined to its very foundations. Far
from being perfected and democratized, this institution has been left as
an instrument that the superpower and its allies intend to use only to
provide coverage to war adventures and appalling crimes against the most
sacred rights of the peoples.

This is no fantasy or simply imagining things. It is a fact
that in barely half a century two great mortal dangers have emerged that
threaten the very survival of the species: one that derives from the
technological development of weapons and the other coming from the
systematic and accelerated destruction of natural conditions for life on
the planet.

The
dilemma into which humanity has been dragged by the system is such that
there is no option now: either the present world situation changes or the
species runs a real risk of extinction. You do not need to be a scientist
or an expert in mathematics to understand this as the simple arithmetic
taught to grammar school children would
suffice.

The
peoples will become ungovernable, and no repression, torture,
disappearances or massive murders will stop them. Not only will the hungry
of the Third World be in the struggle for their own survival and that of
their children, but also the conscientious people from the rich world,
both manual and intellectual workers.

It
will be from the inevitable crisis that rather sooner than later thinkers,
leaders, social and political organizations of all shades will emerge that
will do their utmost to preserve the species. All the waters will converge
in one direction sweeping away all obstacles.

Let’s plant ideas, and there will be no need for all the
weapons created by this barbaric civilization; let’s plant ideas, and the
irreparable destruction of our natural habitat will be
prevented.

The
question stands, is it not too late? I am an optimist, I say no, and I
share the hope that a better world is
possible.